Saturday, February 28, 2015

Colin Falconer will be our key note speaker on 21 March 2015 at the 2015 HNSA Conference on the topic: ‘The ANZAC Tradition as Inspiration:
Imagining the Past; Claiming the Present’. On a less serious note he will appear in our last panel of the conference with Kate Forsyth and Jesse Blackadder in In Bed with History: Sexy, Saucy
and Sizzling Bedroom Scenes – A Romp! on 22 March 2015.

Born in north London, Colin worked for many years in TV and radio and freelanced
for many of Australia’s leading newspapers and magazines. He has been a
novelist for the last twenty years, with over 40 works published widely in the
UK, US and Europe. His books have been sold in translation in 23 countries. He
travels regularly to research his novels and his quest for authenticity led him
to run with the bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black
witches across Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed
in a riot in La Paz. He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the
Camino in Spain. He did not write for over five years but returned to
publishing in 2010 with the release of “The Silk Road’, followed by ‘Stigmata’
and most recently ‘Isabella Braveheart of France’.

Colin's post explores the manner in which an author can be inspired to love history and literature from a very young age in 'Alexander the Great and my Aunt Ivy.'

My primary
school teacher's name was Mrs Boyne. She once told my mother at a parent
interview: “Your son is a complete dreamer. He’ll never amount to anything in
this life.”

I still think
that was a pretty harsh judgment on a seven year old. But she was right, of
course, I was a dreamer. It was my greatest asset.

She told my
parent this about the time I first read Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff.
To get my hands on it, I had to endure a slobbery wet kiss from my Aunty Ivy,
but I considered it well worth it. By the end of that first afternoon, I was
hooked on classic literature.

Every week my
Aunty Ivy took the train down from London to have ‘a nice cup of tea’ with my
mother in (what was then) rural Essex, and she’d always bring with her a
collection of Classics Illustrated comics. She must have picked them up cheap
in the markets in London. There were some Beanos and Victors
mixed in, but I threw them out. My treasure was the cartoon versions of some of
the world’s greatest literature.

I read all of
Jules Verne in an afternoon.

It was the
beginning of my love affair with literature - or with epic stories anyway. By
the time I was eight I had read Moby Dick, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, The
Moonstone, The Black Tulip and Ivanhoe, was familiar with most of the major
works of Alexandre Dumas (Père), Mark Twain and William Wilkie Collins and had
even read most of Homer’s Odyssey (although I never found out how it ended
because the last page had been ripped out.)

I don’t think
that back then Aunty Ivy knew she was giving me primers for my future career,
for no one in my family had ever used their hands for doing anything other than
making shepherd’s pies or fixing corner cupboards.

Those comic
books were important to me. I was an only child and though not particularly
bookish – I was then, and still am, a sports tragic – it nurtured in me a
thirst for great stories painted on broad canvas.

So Aunty Ivy did
not just give me the gift of something to read when it was raining too hard to
play football. Classics Illustrated stirred my nascent imagination and
at the same time gave me an undying thirst for travel and for adventure. These
little gems of comics also made me want to time travel, because many of the
places I was reading about no longer existed.

The only way I
could revisit them was to recreate them in my head. Imagining them onto a page as
historical novels was the next logical step.

I suppose what
Mrs Boyne didn’t account for when summing up my future prospects was what would
happen to my daydreams once introduced to the genius who sandwiched Les
Miserables into 48 lurid pages with speak bubbles.

But who could
have?

This year I’ve
written my forty something book, and I have been accorded the enormous honour
of being asked to give the keynote address at the Historical Novel Society
Conference in Sydney. I like to think that’s not too shabby for a boy who would
never amount to anything.

Oh and I also
have a novel about Alexander the Great about to be published in New York.

I'd send Mrs
Boyne a copy, but we have kind of lost touch.

I’d definitely
send one to my Aunt Ivy, if she was still around, God bless her cotton socks. Wherever she is in heaven, I hope the angels are making her a nice cup of tea.

Featured Book:

She
was taught to obey. Now she has learned to rebel.
12 year old Isabella, a French princess marries the King of England - only to
discover he has a terrible secret. Ten long years later she is in utter despair
- does she submit to a lifetime of solitude and a spiritual death - or seize
her destiny and take the throne of England for herself?
Isabella is just twelve years old when she marries Edward II of England. For
the young princess it is love at first sight - but Edward has a terrible secret
that threatens to tear their marriage - and England apart.
Who is Piers Gaveston - and why is his presence in the king’s court about to
plunge England into civil war?
The young queen believes in the love songs of the troubadours and her own
exalted destiny - but she finds reality very different. As she grows to a woman
in the deadly maelstrom of Edward’s court, she must decide between her husband,
her children, even her life - and one breath-taking gamble that will change the
course of history.
This is the story of Isabella, the only woman ever to invade England - and win.
In the tradition of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick, ISABELLA is
thoroughly researched and fast paced, the little known story of the one
invasion the English never talk about.

Colin Falconer will
be appearing in the following panels at the 2015 HNSA Conference:

In commemoration of the centenary of the Gallipoli Campaign,
international bestselling author, Colin Falconer, will address the
changing attitudes towards the ANZAC tradition which has inspired Australian
historical fiction over the past 100 years.

22 March 3.50-4.35 pm Session Six

In Bed with History: Sexy, Saucy and Sizzling
Bedroom Scenes – A Romp!

Prepare to get hot under the collar as Kate Forsyth, Jesse Blackadder
and Colin Falconer break down closed bedroom doors and read their racier
scenes.

For more information on all our panels, please visit our site for programme details. And
you can buy your tickets here.

You can also sign
up to themailing list to
be the first to keep up to date with breaking news on the HNSA conference in
2015.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

We are delighted that Posie Graeme-Evans will be appearing at the 2015 Conference. Together with Toni Jordan, she will be interviewed by Kelly Gardiner on 22nd March in the second of our Personal Histories sessions. She has also kindly agreed to chair the Historical
Fiction Sub-genres: Intrigue, Mystery, Fantasies and Time-slip panel on the same day. In this post, she shares her insights into researching an historical novel, and the importance to her of 'Walking the Ground.'

Six novels in and Posie now thinks of herself as a writer. It wasn’t always so.
30 obsessional years in TV as a director, series creator and producer (and
sometime Executive, having been Director of Drama for the Nine Network in its
glory days) meant she lived a very different life and loved it. In 2002, Variety
Magazine named her as one of “Twenty Significant Women in Worldwide Film and
Television” in its annual survey. In that same year her first book, “The
Innocent” was published by NY based Simon and Schuster and her first album of
songs came out with Sony Music. That came after she was awarded the inaugural
Screen Producers of Australia “Independent Producer of the Year” for her body
of work and her series, “McLeods Daughters” topped the ratings and swept the
pool at the Logies. It was all a bit of a blur. Now, living between Cygnet and
Sydney, she writes her books in a rebuilt Pickers Hut and loves that too.
Quieter. But less crazy. Or that’s what she likes to think.

Posie is a former board member of a number of organisations
and associations, most recently The Australian Film, Television and Radio
School. She currently serves on the Board of Screen Tasmania & is the Chair
of The Tasmanian Writers Centre Board.

Walking the Ground

Someone
said to me once, “You write about winter and war.”

Now
that’s one of those statements that hits you like a stick. War? Winter? I’d
thought I wrote alternate versions of history: the lives and fates of the
people who walked out of the back of my head. The setting was important – of
course! – but I’d never really noticed the the weather. Then I started to think
about it. It’s true. And I started to wonder, why? That’s brought me to here,
trying to put that ‘why’ into more words. And, trying to talk about why I
travel so much in winter, and not just for research

I
was born in England but came to Australia – Tasmania - when I was 14. My mother
and I lobbed into this small island – to which I’ve returned - from a war zone.
A minor conflagration, as these things go; Cyprus, the Greek/Turkish conflict
that led to the partition.

It
was a shock coming from machine guns to cows. They grazed in the paddock next
to my Tasmanian school (my 13th, as it turns out. There was one more to go, in
Adelaide.) I used to walk through that field, the sopping grass, in gumboots on
my way to class. That first autumn, I’d arrive wet above the knees. Sometimes
that was funny.

My
father, a pilot, was Tasmanian. Like so many young men of his generation, he’d
run away to join a band of brothers to save the West. And they did. So there
was always a warrior in my family, because that’s what he continued to be.
Quiet, difficult to know, but a professional man of war. I think versions of
him, of what I imagined he must have been like as a young man, have found their
way into so much of what I write.

Being
a “Service” family, we moved around a lot so I was often the outsider. War was
always in the background; two other regional conflicts, Suez & Aden, are
half-remembered shadows of my childhood. However, living in (and, frequently,
out of) England before we came to Australia sank deep. I suppose what you
experience as your eyes are first opened to the world – landscape, light,
sound, smell, the built world – is the basic architecture of anyone’s understanding.
It certainly became mine. Even now, so long living in another country, England
feels like home when I return. And I do that as much as I can. Any excuse

And,
it was England that moved me. Not that abstract concept, The United Kingdom (a
misnomer for a start); the England of the Shires, and, above all, of the
countryside. Away, I yearned for that green world. I still do.

Years
and years later when I had become a Sydney-based television producer, that
yearning led me into creating “McLeods Daughters”. South Australia is not
Oxfordshire, or Wales, Yorkshire, or Scotland but it was, and it is, glorious (though
golden for most of the year.) But winter is different. Then the paddocks around
“Drovers Run” turn Irish green.

That
series, which we shot between 2000 & 2008, meant I could run away from time
to time, and on a hill in the Barossa Valley (the location of “Drovers” was
down the road.) That long view re-wove my own personal fabric because I’d gone
beyond frayed after years in TV. Network infighting, fourteen hour days, the
challenge of steering something so big and so terrifying – all of that was
exhilarating, but it wasn’t always good.

I
think the sounds, the light, and the shape of the land in that country North of
Adelaide was what tipped me, finally, into writing books. There’s something
about magic hour there. What is that line, “the long light shakes across the
lakes…” ? That’s it, right there, that’s what moves me.

Wild
light falling across hills and water is so much at the heart of what I see and
what I write about. And it’s why I go back to the Shires, to Scotland, most
recently to Wales and Cornwall, so that I can walk unfamiliar ground and find
the place that’s right; the stage, the box of jewels, that will display my
characters as they declare themselves and play out their stories. Because I
take the real, like every writer, and I re-create it; stitch bits together,
pluck and stick and make a world.

“Wild
Wood”, my new book, is set in my imagined England, as all the others are too.
But the imaginings are always based on fact. Need a castle? Stay in one! Just
now, in January this year, we slept in a tower of Caernafon Castle with a view
of the Eagle Tower (thank you, Landmark Trust!) My bedroom had serious
crenellations outside because it was the top of the watchtower. Date? Oh,
C12th, C13th. What a thrill. Medieval houses? No worries. Monkton Old Hall, in
Pembroke is the oldest inhabited house in Pembrokeshire, possibly in the whole

of
Wales. It was once, and this can be tracked, a Priory Guest House in the C11th,
but no-one knows how old it really is. And it’s haunted. I know that for a
fact.

It
was only Andrew and me staying there, and I had a shocking cold; that night, I’d
put myself in one of the other bedrooms so he could actually sleep. I’d just
turned out the light when someone knocked. Two sharp raps. I thought it must be
him, but no-one answered when I said hello, so I got up and opened the door. It
wasn’t Andrew. He was deep asleep. That was this last January also.

I
wasn’t scared, by the way, I was grateful though I didn’t say “come in”. Did something
stick from long ago? Never invite a spirit through the door. Maybe I knew…

And,
winter? That’s easier. I live and work in Australia and the glare and the heat
are not native to me. Scotland. Come on down. So, who likes the cold, the sleet
and the rain? I do. (It’s the light, it’s the light!) And, who likes empty
landscapes, because all the tourists have gone? Me, pick me!

Nothing
more to be said. I do write about winter and war. One day I’ll set a book in
Australia – I think I know what it is, too – but I haven’t finished with
England. The next book, the one I’m writing this year, is called, I think “The
Outer Sea” (though that may change.)

That’s
why, this time, we went location hunting to Wales and Cornwall in winter, when
the Atlantic is at war with land. It will all be so very useful to me.

For fans of Diana
Galbaldon’s Outlander series comes a gripping and passionate new
historical novel. Intrigue, ancient secrets, fairy tales, and the glorious
scenery of the Scottish borders drive the story of a woman who must find out
who she really is.

Jesse Marley calls herself a realist; she’s all about the here and now. But in
the month before Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 all her certainties are
blown aside by events she cannot control. First she finds out she’s adopted.
Then she’s run down by a motor bike. In a London hospital, unable to speak, she
must use her left hand to write. But Jesse’s right-handed. And as if her
fingers have a will of their own, she begins to draw places she’s never been,
people from another time—a castle, a man in armor. And a woman’s face.

Rory Brandon, Jesse’s neurologist, is intrigued. Maybe his patient’s head
trauma has brought out latent abilities. But wait. He knows the castle. He’s
been there.

So begins an extraordinary journey across borders and beyond time, a chase that
takes Jesse to Hundredfield, a Scottish stronghold built a thousand years ago
by a brutal Norman warlord. What’s more, Jesse Marley holds the key to the
castle’s secret and its sacred history. And Hundredfield, with its grim Keep,
will help Jesse find her true lineage. But what does the legend of the Lady of
the Forest have to do with her? That’s the question at the heart of Wild
Wood. There are no accidents. There is only fate.

And here is Posie's wonderful book trailer for Wild Wood. Worth a look!

Posie Graeme-Evans will
be appearing in the following panels at the 2015 HNSA Conference:

22 March 9.00-9.45 am Session OnePersonal Histories:
In Conversation with Toni Jordan and Posie Graeme-EvansWhat attracted Toni Jordan to historical
fiction after writing acclaimed contemporary novels? And why did Posie
Graeme-Evans change careers from being an enormously successful
television director, producer and executive to an historical novelist immersed
in distant times? Join Kelly Gardiner in learning these story
tellers’ own histories.

22 March 11.15 am-12.15
pm Session ThreeHistorical Fiction
Sub-genres: Intrigue, Mystery, Fantasies and Time-slipBlending different genres within historical fiction is an
increasing trend. What challenges do authors face when intertwining mystery or
fantasy with history? And why are readers drawn to tales of characters who
travel across time? Posie Graeme-Evans joins Kate
Forsyth,Sulari Gentill, Belinda Murrell and Felicity Pulman to
enlighten us.

For more information on all our panels, please visit our site for program details. And
you can buy your tickets here.

You can also sign
up to themailing list to
be the first to keep up to date with breaking news on the HNSA conference in
2015.

VISIT OUR WEBSITE

HNS AUSTRALASIA

Welcome to the Historical Novel Society Australasia. We are open to all enthusiasts of the historical fiction genre world wide. Join our FACEBOOK GROUP for discussions on history, writing, reading, and publishing historical fiction. We look forward to connecting with you at www.hnsa.org.au Contact us at contact@hnsa.org.au

JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP

CLICK THE ENVELOPE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER FOR NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS!